We explore what to expect in design, amenities, smart-home technology in 2024.
Peace of mind seems to be the running theme in luxury home trends in 2024, whether it’s predictive AI learning to anticipate your needs or building amenities that help entertain your kids or your dinner guests.
Added comfort and convenience to day-to-day life comes at a good time. Economic and geopolitical uncertainties are poised to compound in 2024, with multiple national elections in the cards, including the U.S. presidential election, and the uncertain hope that central banks will bring interest rates back down. Those concerns will affect the direction of luxury home sales from New York to Bangkok and to Koh Samui.
With all that external noise in the world, anyone who grabbed the maximalist, more-is-more design trend by the horns—in some cases, literally—might prefer to dial back the chaos. Interiors are going to get a little more curated and nature-oriented as people crave serenity.
Take a look at these trends and more in our 3-part lookahead for 2024.
Gaming, AI and wellness to drive smart-home innovation over the coming year.
Devices will continue to get to know you better than you know yourself.
If it feels like your smart devices know you better than you know yourself, get used to it.
In 2024, technologies like predictive artificial intelligence and biometric data management will continue transforming the role smart machines play in our lives—anticipating needs, customizing experiences and foreseeing troubles. Think of a diagnostic toilet seat or self-maintaining appliances that can schedule their own repairs.
An aging population is also spurring ingenuity in smart tech, with home devices aimed at bolstering independence for older people—from chat bots that might alleviate loneliness to robots that can fetch items from hard-to-reach places.
When it comes to entertainment, gaming companies continue to lead; in 2024, look for advances in cross-platform and cloud gaming, along with AI-driven developments that could make games even more irresistible.
Smart Devices Get More Energy-Efficient
Saving energy can feel like work—adjusting thermostats, shutting down “zombie” devices, turning off lights. But the coming year will bring a new crop of high-tech gadgets engineered for sustainability and energy efficiency as well as convenience.
More thermostats, like the Ecobee Smart, will leverage real-time weather data to adjust heating and cooling, which account for more than half the energy use in most homes. Smart refrigerators will use AI to learn when you open the fridge most, adjusting cold intensity accordingly—and saving those kilowatts. Some fridges will even connect to local power grids, modulating cold at peak usage hours. Both Samsung and GE Profile offer intelligent iceboxes, with more on the way.
Smart-home hubs already offer a peek at energy usage for connected appliances; moving forward, the machines in your home will be able to figure it out for themselves.
Home Tech Adapts to Needs of Older Adults
The industry’s adapting quickly to a fast-growing segment of aging tech lovers—those 65 and older. A 2022 Pew Research survey found technology and social-media usage has soared among older adults in the past decade.
In the home, that means devices that tweak up-to-the-second technology to the needs of elders. VR and AR technology can let older adults experience concerts, exhibitions, and festivals they may not feel up to attending in person. Chat GPT will get trained to answer questions about health, finances, nutrition and current events—a boon for elders who live on their own.
As they become smarter and more connected, wearable health devices and telemedicine will give seniors greater independence as well-being gets monitored in real time. And robotics makers like Oak Park, California’s Labrador Systems are developing assistive robots trained to make stops around the home to retrieve items—even from the refrigerator. AARP’s AgeTech Collaborative and its Innovation Labs are funding home tech that supports aging in place—including Casana, a toilet seat that measures blood pressure, blood oxygen and heart rate.
Forecast: AI Moves from Generative to Predictive
Artificial intelligence has been great at mashing up human suggestions to create content—e.g., “Bjork rapping in Spanish to a polka.” But the coming iterations of home AI will move from generative to predictive, monitoring your habits and choices to make decisions before you do.
On one level, it’s already happening whenever Netflix or Amazon makes suggestions based on your purchase history. But as it gets more refined, AI will offer appliances with predictive maintenance, monitoring their own performance to flag minor issues before they become major problems. Predictive AI will also help customize certain automations when it detects different people nearby, or constantly adjust optimal cooking times for particular recipes based on data from other users.
Multifunctional Devices and Furniture Do Triple-Duty
As rooms continue to serve multiple purposes—like your office-gym-Zoom studio-TV room—furniture will adapt along with it.
Sobro’s sleek coffee table conceals Bluetooth speakers, a phone charger and a refrigerator, with a control touch panel discreetly built into the tabletop.
LG’s ultra-stylish PuriCare Aerofurniture tables, in candy colors like lemon and cherry, incorporate a HEPA filter, wireless charger and ambient lighting options. And for anyone choosing to downsize next year, or acquiring a smaller pied-a-terre, smart furniture, appliances and home accessories that save valuable square feet by doing triple or quadruple duty.
Smart Fitness Shapes Up
Expect prices to come down, footprints to shrink and technology to flourish in the home-fitness segment as more people extend pandemic-era habits of skipping the gym and keeping the exercise.
Smart mirrors, once a high-priced luxury, are projected to grow from a $2.7 billion market globally to $5.9 billion by 2027, according to one report, with brands like Lululemon’s Mirror, Echelon, NordicTrack Vault, and Tonal. As competitors sweat it out, offerings like real-time interactive training should expand as costs continue dropping for users.
Your fitness devices, from wearables to treadmills, will also get to know you inside and out—literally. Biometric data management, AI-powered apps, and virtual reality will let machines customize your workout routines, work up nutrition plans based on your physiological needs and even warn you when you might be overdoing it with that chest press.
Gaming Gets Even Wilder
The brains behind gaming keep expanding possibilities for players. In 2024, look for more cross-platform gaming, which allows gamers to compete with others whether or not they’re on the same platform. The PlayStation PS5 and Xbox Series X are among devices that make it happen.
The coming year will also see mainstreaming of cloud gaming, which—like other types of cloud computing—allows programs to live on servers. For gamers, that means playing ever-more-sophisticated games without having to upgrade equipment or buy new devices. And like other industries, the gaming business is harnessing AI to create game experiences that are more immersive, personalized—and endlessly addictive.
Read more of our lookahead for 2024:
(via Mansion Global)